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Steve's Road Frame Part 2 12/21/16

So it’s been a long time since I last blogged – I’ve been too busy making things and fixing bikes to do it! Sorry about that, must try harder in 2017...

I did indeed finish Steve's road frame, the build went well and I learned a lot from doing it. Unfortunately I deleted all of the "in progress" photos but here is a photo of the completed frame pre paint.

And some photos of the complete bike.

So why does it have a black front rim and a wite rear rim? On his second ride on the bike a pedestrian stepped out in front of Steve and in the resulting crash the front rim was written off. The fork was also damaged. The frame was fine, all angles measure as they should and no detectable damage - Steve however couldn't walk normally for a week. Damn Shandwich Street tram line pinch point! We could not find a replacement white rim, but the black doesn't look too bad.

The bike has met Steve's objectives of light, fast, comfortable road bike and he's used it to wage war on his local strava segments all summer with some success. The frame weighed 1.69 kg vs the Specialized Tarmac it replaced at 1.39kg. Steve reigned in that slight weight gain by fitting lighter tyres and a very light fork.

So what have I been up to all year that's kept me off the blog? Well, I moved into a workshop with a fellow budding bike builder. Here's a photo of the new workshop.

Heavy metalworking tools! Three phase power! Space! Being away from day to day bikeshop! Great!!!

In the middle of the photo is the third frame I built for my friend Gav, back in 2013. TIG welded disc-brake touring bike made of Columbus Zona steel. The paint was never very durable and it's owner used it properly, touring and working as a courier and in the process lots of paint escaped. So it needed a respray, and I decided that building a spray booth would be great! So I built a bead-blasting cabinet for stripping off old paint and built a 2.4x2.4m filtered spraybooth with extraction. I also bought an air-fed full face mask, my lungs are precious to me!

It turns out that doing a decent paint job on a bicycle is hard! Getting even coverage on thin tubes with lots of corners and crannies takes a fair bit of practice. Here's Gav's frame, first of many resprays!